UAE denies Sudan claim of Emirati drone attack from Ethiopia

The United Arab Emirates rejected Sudan’s allegation that an Emirati drone struck Khartoum International Airport, pushing a fast-moving war claim into the center of a broader fight over foreign backing, border security and who is widening Sudan’s civil war.

Sudanese officials said the attack had been launched from Ethiopia, and the army spokesman said the drones took off from Bahir Dar airport before hitting sites in Sudan in March and May. Sudan’s armed forces also accused both Ethiopia and the UAE of involvement in the airport strike and said they would respond to the alleged violation.

The accusation lands in a war that began on April 15, 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict has become one of the world’s deadliest, displaced more than 14 million people, and drawn in a growing set of outside claims and counterclaims that have complicated every effort to narrow the battlefield.

Khartoum airport carries outsized weight in that struggle. The strikes shattered months of relative calm in the capital, and they came soon after the airport received its first international flight in three years, a sign that Sudanese officials hoped normal travel and commerce might cautiously return. Instead, the attack reinforced how vulnerable basic infrastructure remains in a war where air power and drones have become central tools.

The evidentiary fight is now as important as the military one. Sudanese forces said they had flight-path images and other material showing Emirati-owned drones taking off from Ethiopia. The UAE denied the allegation, leaving the claims unproven and the dispute unresolved on the evidence. In a conflict already marked by battlefield propaganda, every accusation of foreign involvement raises the stakes for the region as much as for Khartoum.

For Sudan’s leaders, the allegation matters because it suggests the war has crossed another border and may be fed by external military support routes that are harder to trace and harder to stop. For the UAE, the denial is part of an effort to reject being cast as an active participant in a conflict that has already spread fear from Khartoum to Darfur and Blue Nile state. Either way, the airport strike has become more than a local security incident. It is another test of whether Sudan’s war can remain a domestic contest at all.